Photography: Dave Benett

IT TOOK TWO DAYS to find a new leader of the Catholic church – congratulations to the most famous man from Chicago, Pope Leo – and yet we are still without a James Bond. Daniel Craig, as you will no doubt know, hung up his MI6 key card with No Time to Die. Other sweeping changes: Amazon Studios bought the rights to all things Bond in 2021 and producer and long-time franchise producer Barbara Broccoli exited the scene (not without a little behind-the-scenes drama). It is safe to say there is something in the air – swirling rumours with a chance of fresh starts – and while I am no casting director, I can offer you a very good choice: Tom Hardy.

The 47-year-old actor and Esquire’s latest cover has long been seen as a contender for the role, which makes sense. He has the accent sorted (those gruff Mortlake tones!) and he has the chops. Time and time again, Hardy has surprised and consolidated his position as one of our most intriguing actors: in Nicolas Winding Refn’s spiky biopic Bronson, on double duty as both Kray twins in 2015’s Legend, and in Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster dream thriller Inception. Mad Max: Fury Road, in which he plays the titular very mad Max, elevated him to another level once more. Throughout that varied career, Hardy has proven himself as a consistently weird and confident actor.

But it is the recent moves that have been the most convincing. First up was Gareth The Raid Evans’ Havoc, a relentless Netflix thriller that showed Hardy is as flighty and fighty as ever. He is excellent in the role of a tough detective. And then there is the Paramount+ mega-hit MobLand: an entry into the Guy Ritchiverse that has broken through the television tsunami and become a water cooler series.

In the show, which was written in part by Top Boy’s Ronan Bennett, Hardy plays a gang member with a heart and he seems to have relished the opportunity. The series offered a “similar solar system” to that of Venom, the billion-dollar anti-hero universe that Hardy fronts. “You know, still a studio production, still a big vessel, but it’s different muscles,” he told Esquire’s deputy editor Miranda Collinge. “Some are older muscles that I’m warming up again, like villains and criminals…” With those muscles warmed up, there really seems to be only one way to jump: straight into the driver’s seat of a DB5.

After Craig’s Bond – hailed as a grittier, less polished version of his predecessors – it seemed that we might swing back to a more classic archetype for the next actor. Would that look like Aaron Taylor Johnson? Or maybe James Norton? How about Michael Fassbender? The long-running favourite was screen’s reigning star of suave Idris Elba. Then a new crop of actors took over the internet and subsequently cinemas: Paul Mescal, Harris Dickinson, Barry Keoghan, Joseph Quinn. They are unafraid to be sensitive, they probably have wonderfully curated Spotify playlists comprising sad female musicians.

What if we simply said to all that . . . no? Hardy would lean into Craig’s grittiness and probably take things a few steps further with all those handy lessons from Richie. And he also brings a soulfulness to proceedings: those unpredictable, puppy eyes are transfixing on-screen and would look good ordering a martini as well as charming women. We know he can do the big franchise thing, and we also know he is decent at jiu-jitsu. And not for nothing, the actor also has an army of fans, as evidenced by spending five seconds in Hardy-friendly spaces online. So, count this as a proposal, from a magazine writer to Jeff Bezos (and the 3000 people between us): Tom Hardy is an easy, intelligent choice for Bond.

This story originally appeared on Esquire UK.

Aaron Taylor Johnson, the next James Bond?

Andrew Scott thinks Paul Mescal would make a great James Bond